Keep Your Net Worth, I Want Your Goals

I’ve been tracking my net worth since 2016 and in that time it’s gone up and it’s gone down by a little bit and a lot. (Other financial writers look away for one sentence) I think I’ve come to a point where it doesn’t really matter. Perhaps it was from the stock market being in a tizzy the last few months or just a place you get to after a while of being debt free. I’m at a point where my goals are more important to me then my net worth.

I’ve created habits around my life that guarantee my net worth will slowly but surely start increasing faster and faster. I will gladly take a peek at other blogger’s net worth still but I’m actually more interested in knowing what people are trying to do to push themselves forward than knowing they are making it forward.

Now…having said all of that lets talk about my goals update!

Personal

I have made $0.00. Do I call it a fail? ehhh…No. I have ¾ of a year to rock it! This one I knew was going to be an all year sort of thing. I do have to come up with some reasonable plan on how to make $100. (Start selling plasma again? :-/)

Fun

This is probably my second favorite category because you can’t live life without fun (was that on the back of a cereal box?). Anyways, while it doesn’t look like we made progress, we have added some money into the travel fund.

We have also done light planning for the two trips. We have some ideas on how to get out to Colorado without hating each other (Kindle Fire for the toddler). The key part is having a place where we can stop every 2 hours or so for stretching, running, and peeing. Otherwise, we’ve priced out flights for the Lake Tahoe trip.

Financial

My favorite category! All of these goals are on a solid track. They are all goals that are automated right now. I’m still only dropping $90 a month into my Roth but we knew starting this year that the maxing out of it would be coming from other sources. I did start brainstorming where we are going to find the money to achieve some of these goals.

My Roth: We’ll end up getting the bulk of this funded from my yearly bonus and our property tax refund.

401k: This one is always from the same event…my yearly raise. Got to keep lifestyle inflation in check somehow.

House payment: Come this winter Babe will be moving to the toddler room in daycare and with that comes a huge price drop. That monthly savings will go straight to the house.

Brokerage: This one is sort of iffy. I slated it for June but this all depends on the bath remodel.

Let me backup for a second. In March we finally filed our taxes. We got our state return right away, the federal came April 2nd, and we found out how much our property tax return that comes sometime this fall will be.

Like clockwork I called up the credit union and had $1000 come off the principle of our mortgage right away. The property tax return like i said is probably going to the Roth but the 4,753 is going to our bath remodel fund.

Other

This bathroom is officially a big pile of suck. I’ve been working with our contractor for a while now but the homeowner he is currently working with is dragging their feet (A little beyond our control). I’m not willing to give up on him yet since he has done an awesome job on all the other things we’ve had him do at our house. Really hoping the next project he is supposed to work on falls through so we can be next in line. If not we may have to rethink this come this fall but that will give us more time to set some money aside to pay for it without pulling from other savings.

Either way I have to mark that as a fail. Hoping Q2 is the quarter for us!

I may demo part of the bathroom to make myself feel better.

Final Thoughts

Q1 2018 was mostly a win but only because of the automated goals. We did learn the valuable lesson to never buy generic cheerios (sometimes you can’t skimp out). However, I don’t think that relates to goals. I am happy with our progress and can’t wait to see where we are at the halfway point.

How did the beginning of your year go? Keeping on track with your goals? Need to find more goals already?

10 thoughts on “Keep Your Net Worth, I Want Your Goals”

We’re going through a renovation (we had a pipe burst and some damage, fortunately covered by insurance) and it’s been a loooooong arduous process. Fortunately the part of the house that was damaged wasn’t “critical” (it’s a pantry and our laundry room) but it’s taken much longer than expected.Jim Wang recently posted…My Failure Resume

We are 95% done with our kitchen remodel thanks to a windfall from Uncle Sam (jk I’m aware it’s really my money :P). I’ve been meaning to write a Q1 update following our spending from this project. This def gave me the motivation + some great ieas to highlight. Thanks for the post BoAS!

I’m at a point where my goals are more important to me then my net worth.

Nicely said. I think that’s a huge mindset transition for people to make since most financial experts tell people to focus on the MAGIC number they MUST HAVE for retirement.Dash2Retire recently posted…The Joy of Paying the IRS to NOT Live in America